Tag Archives: Art

New Architecture Books: “Traces of J. B. Jackson – The Man Who Taught Us to See Everyday America”

Traces of J.B. Jackson The Man Who Taught Us To See Everday America Helen L. HorowitzAfter a varied life of traveling, writing, sketching, ranch labor, and significant service in army intelligence in World War II, Jackson moved to New Mexico and single-handedly created the magazine Landscape. As it grew under his direction throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Landscape attracted a wide range of contributors. Jackson became a man in demand as a lecturer and, beginning in the late 1960s, he established the field of landscape studies at Berkeley, Harvard, and elsewhere, mentoring many who later became important architects, planners, and scholars.

J. B. Jackson transformed forever how Americans understand their landscape, a concept he defined as land shaped by human presence. In the first major biography of the greatest pioneer in landscape studies, Helen Horowitz shares with us a man who focused on what he regarded as the essential American landscape, the everyday places of theHarvard Design Magazine Fall 1998 countryside and city, exploring them as texts that reveal important truths about society and culture, present and past. In Jackson’s words, landscape is “history made visible.”

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Horowitz brings this singular person to life, revealing how Jackson changed our perception of the landscape and, through friendship as well as his writings, profoundly influenced the lives of many, including her own.

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Medicine: “Is It An Art Or Science?” (The Lancet)

From a The Lancet online article:

Effective physicians interrogate their patients’ choice of words as well as their body language; they attend to what they leave out of their stories as well as what they put in. More than 2000 years after Hippocrates, there remains as much poetry in medicine as there is science.

The Lancet LogoWHO’s definition of health is famously “a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”. One of the oldest medical texts we know of, The Science of Medicine attributed to Hippocrates, sets out the goal of medicine in comparable terms: “the complete removal of the distress of the sick”.

In my working life as a physician, I’ve never found the distinction between arts and sciences a particularly useful one. In the earliest ancient Greek texts, medicine is described as a techne—a word better translated as “know-how”. It conveys elements of science, art, and skill, but also of artisanal craft. The precise functions of medicine may have subtly shifted over the ages, but our need as human beings for doctors remains the same; we go to them because we wish to invoke some change in our lives, either to cure or prevent an illness or influence some unwelcome mental or bodily process. The goal of medicine is, and always has been, the relief of human suffering—the word patient, from the Latin patientem, means sufferer. And the word physician is from the Greek phusis, or nature: to be engaged in clinical work is to engage oneself with the nature of illness, the nature of recovery, the nature of humanity.

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New Art Books: “Renoir” By Gilles Néret (Taschen)

Renoir (Bibliotheca Universalis) by Gilles Néret Taschen Books January 21 2020In an incisive text tracing the artist’s career and stylistic evolution, Gilles Néret shows how Renoir reinvented the painted female form, with his everyday goddesses and their plump forms, rounded hips and breasts. Renoir’s later phase, marked by his return to the simple pleasure of the female nude in his baigneuses series, was his most innovative and stylistically influential, and would inspire such masters as Matisse and Picasso.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s (1841–1919) timelessly charming paintings still reflect our ideals ofTaschen Publishing Logo happiness, love, and beauty. Derived from our large-format volume, the most comprehensive retrospective of his work published to date, this compact edition examines the personal history and motivation behind the legend. Though he began by painting landscapes in the Impressionist style, Renoir found his true affinity in portraits, after which he abandoned the Impressionists altogether. Though often misunderstood, Renoir remains one of history’s most well-loved painters—undoubtedly because his works exude such warmth, tenderness, and good spirit.

The author

Gilles Néret (1933–2005) was an art historian, journalist, writer, and museum correspondent. He organized several art retrospectives in Japan and founded the SEIBU Museum and the Wildenstein Gallery in Tokyo. He directed art reviews such as L’Œil and Connaissance des Arts and received the Élie Faure Prize in 1981 for his publications. His TASCHEN titles include Salvador Dalí: The PaintingsMatisse, and Erotica Universalis.

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History & Culture: Heard Museum Of American Indian Art In Phoenix Celebrates 90 Years

90 years ago today, Maie Bartlett Heard, curator Allie Walling BraMé along with a small group of friends and volunteers spent Christmas Day making final preparations for the opening of the Heard Museum. The next day, December 26, 1929, the Heard Museum began our now nine decade long and ongoing legacy of advancing American Indian Art.

This short video poem written, recorded and edited by longtime artist and friend of the Heard Museum, Steven J. Yazzie (Diné) is our very sincere thank you to you.

Heard Museum 90th Celebration Poem, December 2019

Heard Museum in Phoenix Celebrates 90 Years

“Home” By Steven J. Yazzie (Diné)
Voiced by: Jenn Henry
Music: Better Now, Phillip Daniel Zach

Why do we come here to these walls painted shades of off white
In search of beauty
or memory
or place
Where the sounds of children can be heard echoing in these vast
and intimate spaces
And where everyone has just arrived here from a journey
What brings us to the feet of stone
or textile
or dried paint
In the galleries of our hearts and truths
Our histories are revealed
and our humanity ensured
This place of my youth and older age
This place of beauty
stewardship
and celebration
Is home

Art: “Invention And Design In Laurentian Florence” (Frick Collection Video)

“Invention and Design in Laurentian Florence”

Patricia Lee Rubin Institute of Fine Arts, New York University

The promotion of Florentine excellence in all of the arts was a mainstay of Lorenzo de’ Medici’s cultural politics. Bertoldo di Giovanni’s sculptural production took place in a context of intense creative competition, resulting in works that are innovative, inventive, and beautiful, qualities explored in this lecture. This lecture is funded by Dino and Raffaello Tomasso.

New Museum Openings: “Fotografiska New York” Showcasess The World’s Greatest Photographers

From a The Art Newspaper online release:

Fotografiska New York Museum Opened Dec 14 2019 Sally Mann quote“People want to see photography and right now there are not a lot of places to do that,” he says. Showing “the best photography in the world” remains Fotografiska’s core mission, Broman says.

The global expansion of Fotografiska is finally taking shape. The Stockholm-based photography hub, founded in 2010 by brothers Jan and Per Broman, will open its New York outpost on 14 December, almost two months later than previously announced.

fotografiska-new-york-museum-opening-dec-14-2019-exhibitions.jpg

https://www.fotografiska.com/nyc/

This follows a venue launched in June in Tallinn, Estonia, and anticipates the arrival in late 2020 of Fotografiska London, billed as the world’s largest photography gallery by the British Journal of Photography.

To read more: https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/first-fotografiska-takes-manhattan

Art Competitions: “2019 Historic Photographer Of The Year” Winners

Historic Photographer of the Year logoThe Historic Photographer of the Year awards showcase the world’s very best historic places and cultural sites from across the globe, capturing everything from the most famous national treasures to the obscure and forgotten hidden gems.

Historic Photographer of the Year Pictures 2019

The 2019 Awards attracted a swathe of astonishing entries from amateurs and professionals who have climbed, hiked and trekked their way to snap stunning historic places from every corner of the globe.

Historic Photographer of the Year Pictures 2019

The Overall Winner was an outstanding image of the ruins of the Arromanches Mulberry Harbour in Normandy and was shot by Stéphane Hurel.

The Historic England category was won by JP Appleton with his haunting shot of the Victorian era Roker Pier, while HISTORY’s Short Filmmaker of the Year was awarded to Dibs McCallum for a fascinating short documentary exploring the remains of the RAF Barnham nuclear weapons storage facility.

 

To read more: https://www.historicphotographeroftheyear.com/2019-winners/

Paintings: How Comedian Steve Martin Looks At Abstract Art (MoMA Video)

The Way I See It BBC MoMAIn this episode of “The Way I See It,” actor and comedian Steve Martin looks at paintings by two early pioneers of American abstraction and takes us on a journey of seeing—shape and color transform into mountains, sky, and water. Find “The Way I See It” on BBC Sounds or wherever you get your podcasts. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000…

Art History Videos: A Look At “How Van Gogh Became Van Gogh” (PBS)

An exhibit at South Carolina’s Columbia Museum of Art shows Vincent van Gogh in a new light. “Van Gogh and His Inspirations” presents the younger, wayward artist who learned from looking hard at the world — and the work of artists around him. A private collection of his inspirations is made public for the first time and presented alongside a dozen original van Gogh works. Jeffrey Brown reports.

New Art History Books: “Feast & Fast – The Art Of Food In Europe 1500-1800”

Feast and Fast The Art of Food in Europe 1500-1800Food defines us as individuals, communities, and nations – we are what we eat and, equally, what we don’t eat. When, where, why, how and with whom we eat are crucial to our identity. Feast and Fast presents novel approaches to understanding the history and culture of food and eating in early modern Europe.

This richly illustrated book will showcase hidden and newly-conserved treasures from the Fitzwilliam Museum and other collections in and around Cambridge. It will tease out many contemporary and controversial issues – such as the origins of food and food security, overconsumption in times of austerity, and our relationship with animals and nature – through short research-led entries by some of the world’s leading cultural and food historians.

Feast and Fast explores food-related objects, images, and texts from the past in innovative ways and encourages us to rethink our evolving relationship with food.

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